To:
Mr. Rainer M. Blair
President and CEO, Danaher Corporation
2200 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Suite 800W
Washington, DC 20037
Mr. Vitor Rocha
President, Cepheid
904 E Caribbean Dr
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Cc:
Mr. Peter Sands, Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
Dr. Lucica Ditiu, Stop TB Partnership
Dr. Cheri Vincent, Chief, TB Division, USAID
October 17, 2024
Dear Mr. Blair and Mr. Rocha,
A total of 206,937 people are saying it’s Time for $5 and seek your response.
On behalf of the Time for $5 coalition, today we have shared with you the signatures of 206,937 people from across the globe who have endorsed the Time for $5 petition. Representing 194 countries, the petition signees include health care workers, global health activists, policy advocates, researchers, scientists, company shareholders, and most of all, concerned global citizens.
We implore you to heed the call in this petition and reduce the price of lifesaving GeneXpert medical tests in low- and middle-income countries to US$5 each for all diseases.
Although we positively welcomed the announcement you made in September 2023 of reducing the price of the MTB/RIF Ultra tuberculosis (TB) test from $9.98 to $7.97, due to your corporations’ lack of transparency around the cost of production of the GeneXpert tests, which you promised to rectify through a third-party audit, we are concerned this price reduction of the MTB/RIF Ultra TB test is not enough – and will continue to delay lifesaving diagnosis of infectious diseases for millions of people around the world. As you may recall, our study by diagnostic specialists and independent industry experts estimated that the cost of production of GeneXpert tests is well under $5 per cartridge at the volumes you currently sell, leaving you ample room for reasonable profit margins.1
Nearly 13 months since your commitment to a no-profit model and increasing access for people in low- and middle-income countries, we stand here today having made no headway on the audit you committed to, compounded by the failure to reduce the price of other priority test cartridges, such as that for extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB, HIV, hepatitis, Ebola, and sexually transmitted infections, for which expansion of access continues to be urgent.
Our attempts to discuss GeneXpert’s affordability barriers and the methodology for its impending audit have been unsuccessful as we have not received any response to the several meeting offers extended to you and your colleagues at Cepheid in the past year. We would also like to remind you that between February and April 2024, letters of appeal sent from health ministries of 7 countries for the price reduction of GeneXpert tests, still remain unanswered by you.
Now, through the ‘Time for $5’ petition, we call on you to prioritise people’s lives over your profits, especially when the R&D for the GeneXpert test technology was funded with over $252 million in public investments.2 We urge you to immediately deliver on your commitments and help us save more lives through the scale-up of testing and treatment in country health programs, as well as provide accountability to your shareholders, some of whom have signed this petition and are active endorsers of the Time for $5 campaign.
We look forward to your written response by October 25, 2024, of concrete plans to meet the demands expressed by the 206,937 signatories of this petition.
Sincerely,
Joan Tubau
Executive Director, MSF Access Campaign
On behalf of 150+ global health organisations and 200,000+ concerned supporters
Your response may be directed to:
Stijn Deborggraeve, [email protected]
Saloni Fruehauf, [email protected]
Mihir Mankad, [email protected]
1. https://msfaccess.org/time-for-5-brief
2. https://msfaccess.org/plos-one-public-investments-development-genexpert-molecular-diagnostic-technology